(“Give her a little space.”)

I know some riders whose secret dream is to have a lesson every day of the week. I can understand that as long as it’s not too many weeks in a row…

It’s not that lessons aren’t good (if they are good, that is). But past a certain very rudimentary level, everyone needs time to process and integrate information— something they can best do on their own or with minimal outside distractions.
I found that back in the day when we had live-in working students, they needed one day a week—or occasionally more time than that— to puzzle things out on their own. This worked best when we had together explored some specific theme or exercise that they needed to “play” with to understand. Recently I have written seemingly contrary advice to riders who over-think and obsess about minutia of little consequence. This is different. The fact is if your student gets too dependent on you “riding” the horse from the ground for her stride by stride or if she finds your constantly surveilling of her efforts intimidating to her own thought processes, she will be better off if you can step back and give her a little space. Whether that immediately makes her better or not, she still deserves that opportunity. When you pick back up a day or two later often you will be met with some sort of epiphanic revelation